Fault-tolerant design isn't optional anymore. As microservices expanded, I experimented with Resilience4j for circuit breaker implementations in Java.
Unlike Netflix’s Hystrix, Resilience4j is modular and lightweight, and integrates well with functional programming constructs.
Example:
CircuitBreaker circuitBreaker = CircuitBreaker.ofDefaults("myService"); Supplier<String> decoratedSupplier = CircuitBreaker .decorateSupplier(circuitBreaker, () -> myRemoteCall()); Try<String> result = Try.ofSupplier(decoratedSupplier) .recover(throwable -> "fallback");
This gave us transparency into service degradation, prevented cascading failures, and allowed safe fallbacks.